A conventional dial padlock, such as disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 3,720,082, shown in FIG. 6 includes a plurality of dials N mounted on one side of the casing C. A mark D is formed on casing C above the dials to enable opening combination numbers to align under the mark. When unlocking such a padlock, all dials N should be rotated until the correct opening combination numbers are aligned beneath the mark D.
Another conventional padlock as shown in FIG. 7, also granted to the same inventor of this application with U.S. Pat. No. 5,125,248, discloses a plurality of dials N protruding through two opposite sides of the lock through two rows of rectangular windows W formed on the front side and the rear side portion of the casing C. This padlock should also need a mark D, so that the opening combination numbers can be aligned to the mark D in order to unlock the padlock.
In both of the above padlocks, the need to locate the indicator mark D, when unlocking the padlock and to align the correct combination to the mark D, often causes inconveniences and, sometimes mistakes, for the users particularly when it is to be unlocked in a hurry.
Furthermore, in both of the above padlocks, when it is intended to reset the opening combination, the shackle S should be rotated to a correct position as shown in the dotted line of FIG. 7, and then depresses the shackle S downward F and hold it at that position while rotating the dials to set a new opening combination. However, the user often inadvertently releases the depressed shackle halfway during the resetting operation, thereby unconsciously leaving some of the dials rotated to a new combination while leaving the remaining dials unchanged at the old combination. Thus, when the dials are scrambled after the operation the user can not open the lock again neither at the old combination nor at the new combination as desired.
The present invention is directed towards improving previously existing dial padlocks by providing readout windows on the side wall of a padlock so that the user have a definite position to read out the combination number. This invention also improves the resetting mechanism so that the user needs not to hold down the shackle while performing reset operation.